mid-December in Chicago

Here is an American goldfinch in his winter coat!

This is an immature bald eagle, taken out of the picture window of my sister's house!

Here is a lovely downy woodpecker. I guess he likes frozen food!

This is a pair of house finches enjoying some fast food !!

This is the male house finch.

Wonder what he is thinking!!??

After getting down to 3 degrees, the lake was frozen solid, even though it had warmed up to 20 on the day I was here. This is a ringbill gull.

The ringbill is on the left, and the bigger herring gull on the right.

I noticed 2 ducks have gone wild and are hanging out with the mallards!

I am going to print out this picture to keep me cool in the summer when I remember how cold we were here, along the upper shores of Lake Michigan near the Wisconsin-Illinois border. The rocks around the shore are coated in ice (kind of looks like the salt at the Dead Sea) as it was about 20 degrees.

This is one of my favorite photos, a female Common Goldeneye duck.

This is how you go birding when it is 20 outside!


If you get too cold, just go birding by car! We saw this little savannah sparrow looking for food in the grass, and I took the photo through the windshield!! (with the heater on)

We ended up here, a prairie with harriers and short-eared owls hunting the voles who were scampering around under the snow. I couldn't get a decent picture with my little camera - they were swooping down, catching dinner, and it was amazing to watch.


Here is a very short video of geese walking around on the frozen lake at my sister's house. No more complaining about the Texas heat in the summer!!!!